The England tour of India gets underway on January 25 with the first Test to be played in Hyderabad. But Ben Stokes & Co. will arrive in India just three days prior to the 5-match series. Reaching the overseas destination with such a short time left for preparation has irked quite a few former players.
However, the team management has different plans to get ready for the Indian challenge. The unit will set up a training camp in the UAE where the Englishmen will have India-like conditions at their disposal.
According to The Daily Mail UK, England will spend nine days in the world-class facilities of Abu Dhabi which will give them everything they need to take on India. Former spinner and Graeme Swann has spoken highly about the facilities.
“The facilities are ridiculously good,” Swann was quoted as saying by the leading UK daily.
‘In that part of the world, they can give you what you want on request. If I said to the groundsman, “I’d like a day-nine Test pitch in India”, he was more than happy for me to go out there with my spikes on and create what England may well face.
“It’s brilliant. The way you’re able to prepare there is second to none and I wish we had it back in my day. We could never do the sort of training they do now. I wouldn’t accept at all that England will be under-done when they get to Hyderabad. They will arrive there ready to play in the first Test far more than if they had a tin-pot warm-up game in India,” he added.
The report further stated that the facility in Dubai has 65 pitches across four grounds and 22 outdoor turf nets where England can replicate anything that India will throw at them. The basic idea is to prepare England to survive in India for the next two months.
“We don’t have specifics in terms of clay but all the wickets do have different behavioural results and then it’s up to England to decide what they best require. We’ve got a team of 20 ground staff who have been with us for the last six to seven years and good international expertise among our management,” said Matthew Boucher, the English CEO of Abu Dhabi Cricket
We talk to England and all our clients regularly to see how best we can provide the optimal surfaces and multi-sport offerings for their strength and conditioning teams. We hope to build on this. We have a good relationship with Afghanistan, for one, and we’re talking to other boards about camps and age-group cricket and that’s a big part of our future. Importantly, it’s a community facility now as well, as much as anything,” he added.
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